Monday, December 07, 2009

Monday Baseball Standings

So, if the Flames beat LA tonight (830PM MT, RSN West), they move into 1st place in the West by this measure. If they beat LA and the Caps lose in Tampa (Ovechkin messes with their chemistry!), they move into 1st place in the NHL.

Which is really not where I thought the Flames would be 10 weeks into the season; not before training camp, and certainly not after watching their first half-dozen or so games in October.

Kipper's results this year have been shocking in their excellence. If we're lucky, it's because some nagging health issue resolved itself with rest over the summer. If we're unlucky, he's Jose Theodore in the spring of '08. Olli Jokinen's enthusiam for shooting the puck in the last week or two has also been enjoyable. I still think he stinks all things considered, but right now he's providing *something* for the money.

One of the posts I didn't write this summer was that the Flames have too many Europeans -- the joke being that they only have two, but those two individuals were the worst value for the dollar. The fact that this observation is N/A right now, particularly with respect to Kipper, goes most of the way towards explaining 18-7-3.